She was doing this to help her family. It was obvious after she’d said it but before then I had no idea. Mr Billionaire, the guy who made shareholders shake in their boots just by being in the same building, that guy was so stupid he hadn’t worked out her real reason for doing this.

She didn’t want to obey me, she didn’t want to submit to me. She wanted to leave. But she was still here and it wasn’t because she was desperate to submit. I was an idiot to think so.

She was putting up with what I’d done in order to help her family.

I could have asked for details but I couldn’t stay in the bedroom with her any longer. I had to get out of there. Just the mention of family made me angry and anger was not good, not when I was already so cross with her for breaking the rules.

I might have gone over the edge, I might have gone too far. Then I’d have to start again with someone else. The idea alone made me feel tired. I was giving my all to making this work.

I found it hard to imagine caring about a family enough to put up with what she had. I’d locked her away, made her strip, spanked the hell out of her and tormented her until she was so addled with lust, she’d broken the rules.

All because she wanted to help her family. What was so special about them? She was poor. That was obvious from her clothes and the way she’d nursed that glass of wine in the pub while I’d been trying to deal with Stephanie.

Were they all poor? Was that it? It was hard to imagine. It had been a long time since I’d known what it was like to need more money than I had.

My bank balance was higher than the one percent. When the papers and TV grumbled about the one percent not paying their taxes, that was me. I was worse than that. I vacuumed up businesses from the one percent to get me even higher, stamping on so many backs, it was impossible to distinguish them from the ground far below.

I sat in my study, the drawer to the Emilia tin tightly closed. I had a glass of Scotch next to me and a half empty bottle next to that. I turned the bottle to face me, looking at the label. Glen McNair.

Cheap. Twenty notes got you a litre of the stuff. It was what my father had always drunk and I’d picked up his habit.

The label was a link to the past, the bottle was too. It was the same as the Emilia tin, a way of me trying to feel anything at all of any depth.

I tried to think about my family, about why I’d been so angry when she mentioned hers. I worried that it might be jealousy but only for a moment.

The idea was laughable. To think that I’d be jealous of someone like her, of a family so far down the ladder I wouldn’t even be able to see them.

I found myself thinking about my family, wondering what they were up to now. There was my father, brought to mind by the bottle in my hand. Last I heard, he was still living in Whitby, spending most of his days painting. What kind of life was that?

Were the kids still with him? My baby brother and sister? I doubted it. They would be in their twenties by now, off doing their own thing somewhere. I had no idea where, they never even tried to get in touch anymore.

My mother was dead. I knew that much. The newspapers had reported the crash, almost five years to the day after Emilia went. Someone up there had a bad sense of humour about that one.

I hadn’t gone to the funeral. I hadn’t spoken to her for three years at that point. I saw no reason to antagonise the others by showing up. I also didn’t want to have to say goodbye. By not going, I could pretend she was just off somewhere like the rest of them.

I drained the glass and poured myself another portion, raising it to the empty chair opposite mine. “To families,” I said out loud as I tipped another swig down my throat.

They wouldn’t miss me. No one would. I wouldn’t miss them either. Good riddance to the lot of them. There was nothing I’d miss in this world.

Then I thought of her. Zoey. Alone in her room. Would I miss her? Of course not.

The thought was too sharp, too fast, as if it was shutting down any debate before it might emerge. I wouldn’t miss her. I hardly knew her. I didn’t know anything about her, not really. Sure, I knew what she looked like, how she reacted around me, but nothing deep, nothing real.

So why did the thought of leaving her behind jab at me? What was that prick of my conscience that thinking of her had caused?

The questions went away because I chose to ignore them. I wasn’t going down that route. I shook my head. “Nope,” I said out loud, getting to my feet. It was time to go to bed. Leave Emilia in the drawer, leave Zoey in the room. Leave my thoughts in the study where they belonged.

But they wouldn’t stay there. They followed me along the corridors, keeping up with me even as I increased my pace until I was almost jogging up and down stairs. I spent twenty minutes walking round, trying not to think about her, about Emilia, about the differences between them.

Zoey was different to the others who’d come here. I never felt the need to ask any of them why they needed the money. I didn’t care. All I cared about was breaking them.

That’s all I wanted to do to Zoey. I nearly stamped my feet as I walked. I only wanted to break her. I didn’t want her to mean anything to me. The idea was terrifying.

Because if she meant something to me, anything to me, then that might mean I had something to live for. If I opened up that can of worms, there would be nothing I could do to close it again. I’d be that sad old fat bastard on his yacht, hated by the world, clinging onto his wealth, seeing attackers on all sides.

I wasn’t going to become him. I wasn’t going to let life win. I was master of my fate. I was master of her. I would master my own emotions and definitely not develop a connection to her. That wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t who I was. I didn’t connect, I destroyed. I pretended to connect to get what I wanted. I did not care about her. I didn’t.

But despite how sure I was, her face was the one I thought of as I drifted off to sleep.